A few months after Playmates’ second wave of Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures hit the shelves, the third wave was released, introducing many more episode-specific characters to the mix.
Gone were the tricorder/phaser “holsters” which had graced the Enterprise crew member figures since the first wave. Sadly, the cheesy phasers – complete with day-glo orange “beams” – remained standard-issue for the Trek toys.
Possibly the most eagerly-awaited figures were the 24th century representations of Scotty (from the much-loved episode Relics), Ambassador Spock (from season five’s Unification two-parter), and 127-year-old Admiral McCoy (from the series premiere Encounter At Farpoint). The likenesses were above-average, and these characters were also a hint at the boxed set of Classic Trek figures which were released during the fourth quarter of 1993.
Surprisingly, despite the lack of a Tasha Yar figure from Playmates, a Sela figure was included (from Redemption II and Unification II). Other episode-specific characters in the third wave were Captain Dathon (from Darmok), Q in Starfleet uniform, Lore as he appeared in Brothers, Esoqq (from Allegiance), and the Vorgon character from Captain’s Holiday.
The new characters introduced in wave two were a vast improvement over the characters introduced in wave one. The sculpting seemed to be taken more seriously. The likenesses of Dr. Crusher, Guinan and Locutus were huge leaps ahead of the original figures in quality, and wave three improved even further – and thus, the way was paved for the first batch of Classic Trek figures, released in time for Christmas 1993.
